Form Us with Love

23 Apr 2012

A holistic experience underpins the products of Swedish design studio, Form Us With Love. Alice Blackwood chats with them from their Milan Midnight Dinner installation at Verger, in the Brera district of Milan.

It’s this all-rounder experience – from concept, to design, production and presentation to the market – that defines the studio’s work and has seen them develop a reputation for edgy yet refined products and design.

“[It was] right after school in a small town south of Sweden,” they say. “We were all educated in product design, with an emphasis on branding [and theoretical learning].

“We’ve been quite active at self-marketing – because we were from a school that wasn’t particularly renowned. We didn’t have any picture of how it’s supposed to be [in the industry]… We really had to find our own way.

“Coming straight from school, we had to learn how to do this, and then learn how to do it in a way that was different from everyone else. And it’s taken these years to work out how to do it in our own way.”

This year Form Us With Love presented a number of new products, including the sweet-as-pie ‘Plug’ lamp, which doubles as an electric plug and a light.

In fact the 3 designers were powering their laptops from these very lights, scrolling through their website as they spoke.

There’s also the sleek ‘Slab’ vases for Silestone, and memorable ‘Keel’ table for De Padova.

In producing each piece, the studio focuses on product design, marketing and PR, seeing to it that each product succeeds at full potential. “Instead of only focusing on product we focus on everything around the product as well,” they say.

“We really want to make a difference. Design is sometimes superficial… we try to make something that matters to the producers.”

When asked if they consider themselves fully established, they reply: “We have a nice base of clients in Scandinavia which makes us established.”

From a team perspective, they feel like they’ve finally found a balance of “who’s doing what… it took us 5 years to come up with that”. And once that is established… “then we can move forward internationally”.